SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2009 COSTA BOOK AWARDS

One Eye'd Leigh is a book of portraits, experiments and objects made of words. They find their locations between Cape Town and London, between the dawn of the new millennium and the present day. Guided by a biographical thread, in her first collection Kate Kilalea borrows the techniques of a craftsman to transform material into new shapes: an artist's concentrated gaze at the very particular subject in her portrait poems; an embroiderer's delicate craft of stitching to create a paced poetry, meticulous in detail. Her language is familiar, her forms transparent. She leads readers through a landscape in which the lucid angles of a chair might express love more precisely than the lines of a sonnet. It is the ways in which these poems turn what is familiar into something strange and new, what is stable fluid, and how out of light darkness is seen to shine, that make these poems powerful, haunting and original.

A wonderful example of original writing. She develops forms, illustrates objects, creates portraits and experiments stylishly with noticeable passion. A delight to read.– Poetry Review

[Kilalea] illuminates ordinary events with arresting imagery...The most striking feature of this writing is its sure-footedness, its effortlessness. – Ambit magazine

It's noticeable that a debut volume like Katherine Kilalea's One Eye's Leigh is [...] consistent throughout, and is vigorous with inventive ideas, colloquial voices and formal energy. - Ian Gregson, Stand Magazine